Except the Feldkommandantur. They would know. They kept lists and records of everything. Everyone. Knackfuss. Colonel Knackfuss, the Feldkommandant himself. He would remember Joe, from the boxing match. He’d tell Joe where Trude was. He could talk to Knackfuss direct. He seemed a reasonable man. What had he said? We treat all opponents fairly. There’s surely been a mistake, Joe’d say. OT workers roamed the island, they must have broken into Geoffrey’s house. They were the guilty ones. They’d been punished. Killed, in cold blood. You have to be lenient, he’d say. Give them a chance. The penalties for helping runaways were too severe.

He propped the bicycle against the kerb, ran up the steps to the Feldkommandantur headquarters. A Wehrmacht soldier stepped in front of him.

‘Business?’

Joe hesitated a moment. ‘I need to find someone,’ he said. ‘One of your nurses.’

‘Why?’

Joe thought. ‘It’s a personal matter,’ he said. ‘Her name is Trude.’ He did not know her surname. He had abandoned everything for her, flung caution to the wind for her, and he did not know her name. He was going to have to throw himself on her mercy now, and he did not even know her name.

The soldier studied Joe under his brown tin helmet and narrowed his eyes. ‘A moment,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

Joe nodded, watched as the soldier went inside. He was shaky, knees trembling and weak. He felt dizzy. Sat on the steps. He would have given anything for a cigarette. He patted his pockets, although he knew they were empty. His binoculars were still round his neck, but he couldn’t leave them in the bicycle. Anyone could steal them. He’d left the case in his own bike at Geoffrey’s farm. If the soldier asked what he was doing with them, he’d be honest. I’m a birdwatcher. It’s my passion. That’s all I ever watch.

The soldier had returned. ‘Come this way.’

Joe stood up and followed him into the building, with its tiled floors and half-panelled walls. A large portrait of Hitler hung above the stairs, draped by two Nazi flags. The soldier’s heels clipped on the floor. He knocked at a large mahogany door.

‘Eintreten.’

He opened the door, ushered Joe in. A plain man, in uniform, with spectacles and a small moustache, sat behind a large desk on which there were two telephones, a variety of rubber stamps and three trays filled with buff folders. Wooden filing cabinets lined the walls. The man looked up as Joe entered. He pointed to the corner.

‘Wait there.’

He carried on reading from one of the folders, turning over each sheet of paper with studied order.